ph_logs | [Closed] Well, well, look who's inside again

[Closed] Well, well, look who's inside again

Who: Jax (

jeveuxpartir), & Ragatha (

raggedydamn) (and potentially other CR!)

What:Reconnecting after the fall of King Eligos

When: The days following the incidents on March 15th

Where: Jax's townhouse, Downtown Hollow

Warning(s): Suicidal ideation, past gore, and everything that goes into that :)

If it weren't for the knocking at the door that echoes throughout his home, Jax still wouldn't have found a reason to pull himself out of the bed, even at the sun-shining hour of 3PM.

Maybe it isn't the most mature choice, to hide away in his house, or the "responsible" thing to do. Nor is it probably up there in the choices he could've made that might've been filed under "considerate of others." But considering that he got his skin ripped off, got impaled, and accepted his death all in the span of a few hours, then proceeded to have to claw his way desperately through bones and monsters and continued terrors.

Yeah, maybe he should've gotten in touch with the people who give a damn about him. But he distinctly did not do that.

In fact, the note on his door, left to potentially deter visitors, reads:

DIED.

COME BACK LATER.

But, when the knock comes, within a few minutes there's footsteps on the other side of the door nonetheless, and a familiar voice that pipes up. He sounds hazy with sleep, the way one might after a nap that was supposed to be twenty minutes turns into a three-hour one. (That's not entirely off, either, but does it count if you've been in and out of sleep for an entire afternoon?)

"So, can you not read, or are you here to try to do a seance or something? Because I'm not really feeling up to that kinda thing right now."

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"Alright, well—"

That's hard to argue with, argumentative as he always is. He stops himself short, closes his mouth, pulls it into a thin line, and lets out another sigh, frustrated with himself, with the world they're in, with existence in general.

"This one had a good reason, but that's a one-off. It's gonna keep happening. You know that, right? I do this. I find a way to make it harder for everybody, and I floor it. And the closer you stay, the more you're gonna get caught in that. I mean..."

A quiet, derisive laugh. It's forced bitterness. He can't even look her in the eye.

"Have a little self-preservation, Pom Pom."

"Mm. Pass." Pomni lays back down, looping an arm over him. "Sounds cringe."

Her words catch him so off-guard that he snorts a laugh, letting his eyes drift closed and shaking his head. He doesn't budge even a little bit to move that arm off of him.

"Fine. Whatever. Can't say I didn't warn you when it bites you."

"Yup. That's a me problem," Pomni agrees dismissively.

For a moment, Pomni considers saying to him what she'd said to Ragatha. The idea of missing that chance again--- it crushes her heart in her chest. But by the same token, she's sure she'd fall to pieces if he chased her off tonight.

No. He deserves to know. He deserves to feel loved.

"Can I tell you something?"

It's hard to know what this is going to be getting at, but Jax would be a liar if he said he wasn't interested. She's got his attention.

"Go for it."

"...When I thought you died," Pomni starts tentatively, "I was--- the thing I hated most was that--- you were gone before I could tell you something important. It was something I was having a hard time getting out, because I was worried how you'd react, but I---"

The words love you catch in her throat as she looks him in the eye.

The only thing worse than not getting to tell him would be getting kicked out right now, when she needs him the most.

Abort abort abort.

"---I care a lot about you. You mean so, so much to me, and I'd--- really, really hate it if you were gone. So. Don't ever think your life doesn't have any value."

For a long few moments, he doesn't know what to say— his attention flickers away from her for a moment while he sits with that. He does wind up looking back, and tossing her a little smile, even tired as it might be.

"...Glad to have you around, too, Pom. If it wasn't obvious, since I let you get in my bed and everything." The joke is a little flat, but it isn't a jab, at least. He reaches an arm over to give her a little nudge. "You don't go finding any demon torture traps to throw yourself in on my account, either, alright? Can't imagine not having you a round."

It's not so forward as I care about you, too but with as worn out as he is, he lets the fond glance and the closeness do the talking.

And that's enough for her. Pomni manages a little smile, hand curling around Jax's as she pulls herself a little closer.

I love you. The words go unspoken, but she hopes that by some miracle, if she thinks it at him hard enough, if she presses her forehead to his and beams him the information telepathically, he'll feel it somehow. I love you.

Is it friend love? Familial? Romantic? Does it matter? They went through something horrible together. Twice. And despite the rockiness of their relationship, Pomni feels like somehow, their spirits have aligned somehow.

"I won't. I don't wanna die for you if I don't have to. I want to live with you."

She's close. Closer than he's let anyone be, in fact; even during better days, all those years ago, he was held, but never like this. Never resting his mind against anyone else's, which, even if just for a moment, stops the horrible roll that has been going on for years. He's found himself starved for the touch, both unable to accept it and desperate for it to say, every touch putting him on edge and soothing him all at once.

His arm that doesn't have the hand being held tentatively loops over her, slow and careful. It feels like he's moving through water, weighted by lead, but he manages it. A soft sigh escapes through his teeth, and he lets his eyes slip closed, even if just for the moment.

"Yeah. Yeah, that sounds... that sounds good."

Maybe she really can get that from her mind, right into his own. Even if he can't put it into those words exactly, he's certainly feeling it, all the way down to his core.

"...Don't leave again, okay?" Pomni pulls back just a little too look him in the eyes. "Stuff--- happens here, and people die and come back all the time. Like that Yorick guy, he's getting killed like every other day. And I'd rather that not happen to you, but I won't get on your case. But. If it ever looks like there's no coming back... do me a favor and make sure you live. Come hell or high water. No matter what, we live. Got it?"

She offers him a hand with an outstretched pinky.

That's a hell of a promise to make him give, and she has no idea that it is. He could tell her that he can't manage it, of course— that this isn't the sort of thing he could ever see himself course-correcting from— but with the way she looks at him, the way she reaches out, he just can't find it in him to shoot her down. Besides, it's a nice thought, if it somehow managed to shake out that way?

(It wouldn't be the first promise he's broken. But for her sake, he'll add one more to the potential list.)

His pinky links with her own.

"You got it, Pom."

Some burden or other falls off Pomni's shoulders visibly as he accepts her terms. A bond forged in childhood superstition and playground secrets, the most delicate finger on each hand wrapped around the other like steel chain links. Unbreakable. She trusts him.

She loves him so much.

"Good," Pomni says succinctly. "Because if you ever make go through that again, I will find your ghost and kick its

."

She tucks her head back up against his chest, curling into him. She's never seemed smaller.

That actually manages to get a short little laugh out of him, and even as surprised as he is that she's settled herself back against him, that doesn't stop Jax from letting out a soft breath and letting his arms settle around her.

There's something inherently wrong about seeing her this small. Even if she's one of the shortest members of the Circus, she's always had the presence to make up for it. He can't even blame her for the dungeons draining her of all of that for the moment, either, but it doesn't make it easier to see while it's happening.

Apparently their first conversation wasn't far off the mark. She really needs someone to make sure she isn't in the line of fire of all this real horror. (Since when did he turn into someone who looks out for other people?)

"Seance for an ass-kicking sounds reasonable to me. If anybody was gonna pull that off, it doesn't shock me that it'd be you. ...But, y'know. Not gonna hurry up and test that. We'll find some other ghost for you to rough up."

"Sounds good," Pomni says with a chuckle.

Then she falls quiet.

A question weighs on her. She already asked Ragatha, and she's... well, to say she's hesitant to bring it up to Jax would be an understatement. But there's something that feels wrong to about trying to have a grasp of who Ribbit really was outside of the horrible, abstracted spectre that visited them without Jax's weigh in.

"Hey Jax? It's--- okay if not, but--- can you, um. Tell me about Ribbit? What she was like before."

The question seems to snap him out of the last bit of his sleep-haze, eyes wide and brows creased with anxiety. He glances down to her for a moment, just to see if he can get a good look at her face - and when he can't, he stews on it for a moment.

"...Nothing like that, obviously," he mumbles the first half of the answer. After a moment of stewing, he lets out a slow breath, staring ahead into the rest of the dark room. "They were... sorta the life of whatever room they were in, honestly. She was funny, a little unhinged in a good way, weird, also in a good way, you know? It seemed like she always was just able to tell exactly what somebody needed to shake off whatever awful thing we all just saw."

A few beats of quiet pass, before he shifts his shoulders gently in a little sort of shrug.

"They were there when I first got dropped into the circus. ...Helped me get my head back on right," he admits, reluctantly. "You would've liked her a lot, I think."

"I think so, too," Pomni agrees earnestly. Sensing his tension, reaching around to rub his back a little, consoling. Maybe it was a little mean to ask, but. "...I just didn't want my only knowledge of them to be--- that. It's not fair to them. They deserve to be remembered the way they were."

It's not what she wants to think about, but Pomni's mind can't help but drift to why she might have abstracted. Despair and madness. Maybe Ribbit was like Jax in some ways, hiding her pain with jokes. Except Ribbit did so until it was much, much too late.

The thought that follows hardens the pit of Pomni's stomach. She hugs Jax a little tighter, but says nothing.

"Yeah, that's... fair. She wasn't anything like that. That was a messed-up trick to just make the whole thing worse for everybody involved. Getting the feeling that's just how the demon junk goes."

Jax doesn't argue with getting held closer, tighter, even if he doesn't get what it's for. At this point, he's just chalking it up to Pomni being a little clingy, and writing it off under that guise. Worse things could happen, after all, and after the day they'd had, he can let her have that.

"...I got some old pictures of them, back in the circus," Jax admits, after a moment of uncertainty. "If we ever get stuck back there again, I'll let you see 'em. They get you a better picture of her than whoever was wearing her face did."

"It wasn't really her, then," Pomni muses. "I wondered about that."

A quiet pause, thoughtful. That hand that was rubbing his back had slowed to a stop, but she catches that it happened and continues. An itchy thought enters the back of her head. What if this is my only chance to be like this with him? What if tomorrow, things go back to the way they had been? If she's honest with herself, that's probably going to be exactly the case. But what can she do, besides soak up what she can have now, and try to be at peace with tomorrow's loss?

"I'd love to see your pictures. Do you have pictures of Kaufmo too?"

"Yeah. Just another weird trick from that place. Good riddance."

Jax notices the slowed hand, but almost moreso, notices her picking back up the pace, like she'd gotten distracted. It's hard to tell where her mind's wandering off to. Is she thinking about abstraction in general, or Ribbit? It's an easy path to wander down. Is it something he said? Maybe he shouldn't have offered her to have a look at those. Or, maybe, it's Kaufmo, considering her next question— clown-colored ships passing in the night, those two. That's got to be awkward.

"Yeah. We, uh... used to hang out during the downtime, all three of us. So I've got a few with him in 'em, too. I'm not sure if you would've gotten along with him, or he would've driven you nuts. That's how it usually went with him and new guys."

Pomni chuckles softly. "I like to think I'm good at getting along with most people."

(She gets along with Jax, after all, doesn't she?)

"...I bet we would have all been good friends," she says, gently but solemnly. More than anything in the world, she wishes she could've met them, even if she couldn't have helped them any more than Jax or Ragatha. Just knowing them, so that she could remember them too and keep them alive in that way, would be enough. But they're not the only people she missed out on knowing, either. Kinger's wife. Scratch. How many others? Who will remember them all now that they're gone?

"What you said about forgetting about me if I abstracted. You weren't telling the truth, were you? You remember more than anyone."

If Jax had more energy, if he wasn't being held, if she hadn't carefully tracked down the individual threads to pull pieces of his walls back, he might've reeled back, pushed back, maybe even stormed off. Wide, exhausted eyes stare at the top of her head, like looking at her will push the thoughts at her, stop. Stop looking. There's nothing worth seeing here. Why won't you stop?

But, after a few passing seconds, he lets out a sigh, long and exhausted, tipping his face to bury his cheek further against the pillow.

"...It doesn't matter, Pom. Seriously."

It not mattering doesn't keep him from having so many unnecessary details etched into his mind forever now, though, does it?

"It means the world to me," she says, in the tone of correcting him. "...Once people are gone, memories are all that's left. Remembering matters. The version of someone that lives in your mind... keeps living as long as you do. They're still here just a little bit, because you're here."

She can feel him stiffening, though, she realizes. She's pushed too far, asked for too much. She eases off.

"...Sorry. I just... think about the kind of stuff, sometimes. People, memories... they're important to me." A beat. "Thank you for telling me."

"...It was never supposed to be real, y'know. We were never supposed to be real." The words are out of him before he even processes them, but he pushes on. Too late to back out, after saying something like that. "But Caine lost his

, and now we're here, so now it has to be real. And everybody who abstracted has to be."

He draws in a breath, and lets out a slow one, turning his attention back to the wall across the room.

"Thinking about that kind of stuff's gonna make you go nuts. And nobody else bothers. Bet you could even ask Rags if she remembers half the people she saw come through, and she'll be able to tell you just a couple things at most. And they're right! Why bother?"

His tangent falls quiet when he catches himself, and he lets out a stressed breath through his teeth, before he readjusts his hold on her, settling a bit closer.

"...I dunno. I'm probably just overthinking because I'm tired, or drunk, or something."

Pomni looks up at him with an unreadable expression as he carries on. Her eyes are wide, her mouth slightly open, eyebrows---- ambiguously placed. Is she anxious? Upset? Hurt? Afraid?

In reality, it's none of that, exactly, it's more... just... realization. Understanding Jax's mentality a lot better than she previously had, even with just that handful of words. He'd done some serious mental gymnastics to protect himself, and Pomni was already a little aware of that, but the extent has deepened substantially.

He's scared.

After a strange, silent moment, Pomni scoots up a little, so she can be the one whose head is on top, the spot where her nose would be pressed to his forehead. "I won't forget about you," Pomni reminds him, very softly so that no one in the world might dare hear. "And I won't leave you all alone again. I'll remember your friends with you, so that they can live in me, too. And I'll be here for you if you need me. Always. I promise."

It's hard to be under her sight, and he tries to shy away from it after he finishes prattling, but she pulls him back in, leaning her forehead against him and keeping him in a spot that's so... intimate. Close. Fully-embraced, and above all else, safe. He doesn't know what to do with it; it almost makes him squirm, overwhelmed, until she speaks up, words so quietly spoken against his face.

Always.

There's a gravity to that, one that he almost can't handle. His heart hammers in his chest. Gold eyes stare through her, pupils pin-pricked, as his mind races in circles at incomprehensible speeds.

His resolve collapses, like rotten beams of an abandoned home caving in.

Letting out a shuddering breath, he can't find the words. He's worried that, if he dared to try to find out if he still had a voice in him, that something about the mere idea of permanence in someone's mind, of someone in his life, might choke a sob out of him. So he doesn't; instead, he simply tucks his face further against her, looping his arms tighter around her.

He doesn't want to lose this. But at the same rate, isn't he just preparing her for something worse when the inevitable comes to pass?

What an unbelievable tangle this has all turned into.

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